


We, Rockets

by FoundMarbles



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 09:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoundMarbles/pseuds/FoundMarbles
Summary: Maru glances down from the swirling movement of Haley beside her, tracing her fingers along the binary systems speckled out in the stars. It reminds her of her first stargazing with her dad when she was six and ripe to the cozy corners of Pelican Town, small in size, but expansive in spirit. She remembers the sticky strawberry residue between her fingers and all over her overalls like the glow of the waxing moon.Haley, near to shaking her off-the-shoulder dress off of her pale body, grasps onto the arm of the lawn chair that feels surprisingly like the squishy, warm flesh of her newly formed friend.  She smiles to herself, with foreign wonders, like a child experiencing the world for the first time. And that’s when it hit Maru. What it meant for Haley to be out here, sitting in her own skin, watching comets soar above with a girl she never bothered to get to know.Haley had her head up in the clouds, but could never break the seal to venture past it. And Maru, humbled towards the ground, built her way into the sky. With the way her arm buzzed at a simple touch and a soft graze from Haley’s fingertips, she could see herself building something for two.





	We, Rockets

Haley often whines about her hatred for the Valley with the exception of the beach, though it’s combed over with broken shells and random junk. On nights like tonight, where the air is as warm as dew, she tags on three more things. Coconut wine, goat cheese, and a hunk of jock meat hovering over her. 

Alex breaks off a piece of goat cheese from the platter, dangling it near her pink lips more teasingly than she ever thought possible. The poignant scent of the aged cheese filled her nose, watered her mouth, to a point where Alex couldn’t keep his dumb and dim smirk to himself. He leans down and pecks her soft lips. Haley presses her head back into the blanket with a playfully foul look. 

“Ugh, your breath smells like goat,” the blonde all but giggles out. She chases her comment with a wine induced hiccup. 

“Can’t help it, Haley. This cheese is to die for,” Alex says, popping the chunk he teased her with into his mouth. The flavor melted his composure as he flopped back on his side of the picnic blanket. 

“Uhh, yeah, I know,” says Haley. “It took forever to figure out where my sister kept it, like she doesn’t trust me or something.” 

“It was worth the hassle, wasn’t it?” 

Haley huffs, flashing her knuckles towards herself, fingers outstretched. “Well, I could do without the broken nail.” 

Alex relaxes a lazy smile over his lips, propping himself up. He plants his thumb under her chin and guides her to him. Her pout causes the gloss on her lips to reflect the light from the moon, making them look that much more kissable to him. He kisses her again, tasting the diluted wine on her tongue, like he could get tipsier just sucking the flavor off of her mouth. It’s almost as stinging as the real thing. 

Haley places her hand on his sports blazer and shoos him back from her warmth. Alex props back up on his elbow in satisfaction, swirling around the the savor. He watches Haley fumble for the half drunk bottles where she tips over her empty crystal with her non-occupied hand. It’s suctioned to her lips desperately to where even Alex worries about the state of her mental being. 

“Uh, Haley? I think you should slow down,” He chuckles, but it diffuses quick to her slow shake of her head, bubbly on her cheeks and chin. 

Her mouth tears off the cold glass lips of the bottle. “I’ll fill it back up with water, Alex. Nobody will know the difference.”

Although the thought sits between them -- obviously not what Alex was concerned about. Emily, the few times he interacted with her before being swept out the door after her little sister, she spoke brightly to him, and solemnly about Haley. A warning, perhaps, from Pelican Town’s most positive citizen, to look out for her family. At times like this, with wine sinking into Haley’s porcelain skin and her whole presence dimming, he thinks about those passing comments. 

He’s thinking of objecting, removing the vessel from her greedy hands and smoothing back her unkempt curls from lying in the grass, but it’s intimacy he can’t see himself giving her. The alcohol gives her thick skin that he can’t tear past, no matter how many kisses he provides. He can’t suck the thoughts out of her pretty little head. 

So he watches her until the guilt begs him to speak.

“Do you ever think about the future, Haley?” Alex murmurs quietly next to her. Haley’s lips tighten around the bottle before popping it off. 

“Why would I need to do that? I’m hot. I’m young. I’m set until I’m thirty, at the least,” she sighs dreamily. The wine becomes a candy to her, and she downs another generous swig. When the glass hits the ground, the inside is dry, and Haley’s eyes are watered over. 

Alex is no genius by any means. He received Of Mice and Men for his last birthday by his grandmother, given with a sad smile, and he could barely read the first chapter outloud to her and her aged blue green eyes. Despite his shortcomings, he still put his best into everything he did. Haley, he slowly started to figure out, was the exact opposite — secretly book smart, brilliant in her own passions, but never applied herself to any of them. He could only imagine what he’d accomplish with brains like hers. Maybe he’d invent stuff like that carpenter’s daughter or help people like Dr. Harvey. The possibilities seem endless to him, but Haley treated her intelligence like a burden. 

“Come on,” Alex huffs out. “If I had the smarts that you had, I wouldn’t settle to be a gridball player for the Tunnelers.” 

“But that’s good!” Haley slurs. “Think of the money you’d make! I wouldn’t have to work a day in my life.” 

“That’s just it, Haley! I don’t know if I’ll really hang onto anything from Pelican Town when I get to ZuZu City besides my grandparents, a-and I know you’re too drunk to understand that that includes you.”

Two thirds of coconut wine in Haley’s system did dilute the immediate sting she should have received from Alex’s doubts. Usually he matched her level of drinking, and all of his thinking came straight from his dick. They would live in the penthouse of ZuZu Towers, they would own expensive cats, they would color the city with their presence. The power couple of the century. Featured in Zu — alone and together — countless times. Loved by all. And fueled by alcohol, neither questioned whether or not they actually loved each other. Yoba probably counted the days that one of them would sober up and see the mess they’re perfecting. 

Haley never thought it’d be him. 

“So you’re abandoning me? And leaving me in this hell?” she shoots up, hiccups, and suppressed the urge to vomit. “How could you!”

“Haley, keep your voice down. I can explain,” Alex mutters again, placing his hands on her ice cold shoulders. She wouldn’t take his jacket when the wine warmed her insides. 

“N-No! You’re leading me on!” Haley stumbles to her feet, shoveling a handful of goat cheese between her teeth as an attempt to stop her emotions. 

Her angry chewing sounds like her teeth crushing together and the soft cheese isn’t enough to cushion it. Alex stares at her, waiting for her to wear herself out. She gets silly with booze in her system, sometimes outright adorable, even when she’s baring her cheesy teeth at him. A chuckle burbles out of his throat, but he quickly sucks his lips in. He knows she’ll remember this, and she’s fully comprehending what he says. Under blunt insults and sour looks, Haley’s wilting.

“Can we talk about this when you’re sober?” Alex pleads, defeated. 

“I’m not, I’m not drunk,” Haley stammers. “But I was supposed to go with you. We were supposed to leave the Valley together. What happened to that?”

“Because who are we kidding? We can’t just count on my success. We’ll starve within the first month of living in the city. You’re trying to take the near perfect life here and bring it with you, and that… that we could lose. I only want to gain, Haley,” he flutters a shaken breath, as if the delivery made his waning decision permanent. 

“You tell me this tonight?! Celebrating our sixth months together?” Haley spits out chunks as she speaks.

Alex rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well.. You drinking a whole bottle of coconut wine isn’t what I would call a celebration.” 

Haley wipes her lips off, smearing the flavors, tart and savory, with her clenched fists. Her eyes ride tired and blurred, and she can barely decipher anything but her own anger clinging to every part of her body like bug welts. 

“Well, who would want to be with someone who can’t even spell celebration,” Haley says, still sober enough to realize and seal her lips shut with her hand. But the mirrored shock in Alex’s eyes tells her the damage has been done. 

It’s a trivial blow, perhaps, to come out of loose lips, but not when it comes from a brutally honest girl who, before this evening, had never spoken a harsh word to Alex. He huffs out another dry breath and pinches the bridge of his nose, pushing back more emotion than he wished to. If he didn’t engage her, she wouldn’t have pounced right back and tore out the one thing that hit him. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating his father in front of him, screaming to his youthful self about his doubt of Alex amounting to anything. But it isn’t his father. It’s Haley. It’s the girl who treated him like he felt entitled to be treated. Maybe that’s his human error in this whole thing.

“A-Alex, I didn’t mean to say that. You know I didn’t mean it.”

“But you did,” he snips back, slapping his hands onto his face to smear whatever liquid he could feel -- sweat, wine, tears. He didn’t care. “We both know it, but I never thought you’d say it to me.”

With shaky legs, Alex rises up to his feet. He waves Haley’s phone in the air next to him with Emily’s contact open, hurting her dark adjusted eyes. He presses the call button and tosses the phone next to her. 

“Sorry, Haley,” he says. 

After Alex ducks out of her sight and into the darkness, Haley rocks back onto the ground with remorse heavy on her chest, tears in her waterline. Her head rewound all of the bullshit that she created — even before she popped open the wine bottle. Everything fell so fast where she didn’t even think there was a way to salvage the situation had she been in a clear state of mind. Maybe talking about the future solely when they felt overly young and invincible would eventually turn their plans into childish dreams. And those dreams work her up, even through the alcohol.

“Haley? Hello? Helloooooo? Did you take mom and dad’s very expensive wine and…” Emily’s voice acts like melatonin to her reddened and watery eyes — Haley didn’t realize she had started to cry —even as her sister’s voice got more rapid and harsh in the fraying connection.

Look at me, she thought, passing out like the new farmer has done a few times, but this isn’t the diamond filled mines, no, these monsters are her all in her head, her stomach, her bloodstream. Maybe she’d care if she hadn’t trained herself so hard not to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to all that read this! Here is my first attempt at a Stardew Valley fic, so go easy on me. I wanna start small with a fluffy angsty romantic type of story, and honestly, this story doesn't have a set direction yet. It's a guinea pig story, we will say. 
> 
> If you want more, please let me know. Thank you for reading.


End file.
